While the prewar conference was being held in the Land of Stars...
The Land of Earth, Iwagakure.
This village, buried deep in the mountains and surrounded by brown rock, had also entered a tense stage of war preparation.
The crushing defeat five years ago had left a stifled anger building up throughout Iwagakure, from top to bottom.
Since its founding, Iwagakure had always been one of the top three ninja villages in the shinobi world. When had it ever suffered humiliation like this?
The pride this generation held as members of a great ninja village had been trampled underfoot by the newly risen Land of Stars, and many ninjas of Iwagakure refused to accept it.
Even though ten thousand Iwagakure Ninja had witnessed the Uchiha clan's Susanoo in that disastrous defeat five years ago.
But now, the Land of Stars was provoking the entire shinobi world!
The Hidden Leaf Village, Kumogakure, Kirigakure, and all those small and mid-sized ninja villages had all been threatened by the Land of Stars.
Even an ordinary Iwagakure ninja picked at random believed that, this time, with the combined strength of the entire shinobi world, they would surely be able to wear down those few Uchiha ninjas of the Land of Stars!
Just like in the Third Shinobi World War, when they had used ten thousand men over three days and three nights to grind the Third Raikage to death!
That unwillingness over the great battle five years ago, their fear of the Uchiha clan and Susanoo, and their thirst for revenge had formed one enormous mass of contradictions.
On the back mountain of Iwagakure, inside a prison built at the summit, Kurotsuchi stared boredly out the window at the deep blue sky, where white clouds drifted by one after another, so leisurely that they